homepageCENTENARY STAMPS- FIRST DAY COVER

 

First Day Cover

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Swiftsure class

Submarines (Swiftsure Class)

Reproduced from a stamp designed by Dick Davis with a photograph courtesy of The Royal Navy Submarine Museum and issued by the Royal Mail 10 April 2001

Vanguard Class

Submarines (Vanguard Class)

Reproduced from a stamp designed by Dick Davis with a photograph courtesy of The Royal Navy Submarine Museum and issued by the Royal Mail 10 April 2001

Unity Class

Submarines Submarines (Unity Class)

Reproduced from a stamp designed by Dick Davis with a photograph courtesy of The Royal Navy Submarine Museum and issued by the Royal Mail 10 April 2001)

Holland Class

Submarines (Holland Class)

Reproduced from a stamp designed by Dick Davis with a photograph courtesy of The Royal Navy Submarine Museum and issued by the Royal Mail 10 April 2001

 

The first day cover produced by the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in association with Internet Stamps Ltd.

Plain unsigned covers can be obtained from the Submarine Museum Giftshop

PRICE £7.95

£8.80 incl.UK P&P

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Signed first day covers can also be ordered from Internet Stamps Ltd. - Click here for details

Designer Dick Davis worked closely with the Royal Navy Submarine Museum Gosport in the development of the Royal Mail stamp issue. He is a resident of the Isle of Wight and so was able to visit the Museum frequently and research in the photographic archive. After a painstaking research process, Davis selected a quartet of archive photographs to symbolise significant eras in the Royal Navy submarine’s history over the century: the first submarine; one that best summed up the Second World War effort; a Cold War exponent; a state-of-the-art nuclear submarine.

Once the relevant images had been selected, a certain amount of digital work on computer took place, both to clean up the original photographs and to extend the area of sea slightly so that it would fit the dimensions of the stamps

Each stamp was assigned a different colour identity, for both aesthetic and practical reasons (Post Office counter staff need to be able to differentiate stamp values at speed). Davis also created graphic icons - a sonic wave, a depth meter, a view from a periscope and a blueprint drawing of a submarine, which were dropped into the image using a computer. Finally, a waterline and silhouettes of the featured submarines were placed on the left-hand side of the stamps, suggesting the depth at which they typically operated.

Dick Davis’ work has frequently centred around marine subjects, with clients ranging from the Royal Maritime Museum to the International Sailing Federation, Portsmouth Dockyard and Explosion, a new naval museum In Gosport. The submarine issue is Davis’ third successful stamp commission, following his Doomsday Book series in 1986 and a set of illustrated lighthouse stamps in 1998.

Philip Parker
Royal Mail

 

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